


somebody's in-between girl

by littledust



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mystique is in the process of defining herself as a member of the Brotherhood. Emma assists, or perhaps she doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	somebody's in-between girl

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Потерявшаяся в пути](https://archiveofourown.org/works/738712) by [miroveha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miroveha/pseuds/miroveha)



> Written for [Porn Battle XII](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/40106.html)! The title is a line from "Hold On, Hold On" by Neko Case. [[Original comment](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/40106.html?thread=6140330#cmt6140330)]

Emma makes no pretense of scruples, and Raven (Mystique, she corrects herself, and wonders when her true name is going to break out of its parenthetical chrysalis even inside her own head) grows re-accustomed to another presence within her mind, ticking through her secrets.

 _Honey, you don't really have any secrets to tell._

Mystique catches a thrown knife between her hands, palms roughening to compensate for its edge, and bares her teeth in a smile she's learned from Magneto. _Will you be able to tell if I get some?_ It's not all bravado, either: Mystique is probably the world's only expert at shielding from telepathy. Charles doesn't (didn't) read her mind anymore, but that was only after a few years and a particularly embarrassing incident. Mystique turns the knife over in her hands, thinking of little girls with long curls and daisy chains, and when the knife comes hurtling back at Emma's face she blinks in surprise before she bats it away with one diamond-encrusted hand.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Emma says in response to the direction of Mystique's gaze, and her thoughts as well, if she's being honest. The hand sparkles in the sunlight, throwing shards of light around the room. "It's nice to know that some metaphors can be literal."

"Can you feel anything? When you're like that?" Mystique asks, and Emma's gaze snaps from her hand to her.

"Can you?" she replies, voice mild, and sets the knife aside on a dusty table.

They really need to find some better accommodations, even if this one at least has furniture, Mystique thinks, her heart tapping a nervous beat against her ribs. She orients herself in the physical: the shafts of light through the window, incongruous to a girl grown accustomed to December in England; the haphazard scattering of chairs and tables, wood scarred like past promises; the itch of dust against her face, making her eyes water and her nose itch; and the slant of Emma's shoulders and hips, which say she isn't trying to hurt Mystique, but doesn't mind that she is just the same.

"I'm not in disguise right now," Mystique says. Because honestly, who is going to put on blonde hair with Emma Frost walking around, the living embodiment of everything she will never be?

"Mutant and proud," Emma says softly, testing, and Mystique flinches.

Believing in one thing and actually living it feel quite far apart most days.

*

They're in a tiny hotel in Bolivia, and the unhappiness in the air is as thick as the humidity. They've been killing off CIA operatives, first one by one and then in groups. Mystique wants to pretend that it's to stop the CIA from causing any more damage than it already has, that it has nothing to do with the news that Charles will never walk again. She killed a man today, squeezed the trigger and watched the hole in his head blossom like a startled flower. She lowered the gun, and Angel had to pull her out of danger as Mystique sobbed something about not being sorry, never being sorry, they had to pay for everything they did.

Thankfully, the tears stopped long before Erik debriefed them on the mission completed, and they show no signs of returning. Mystique's eyes burn with the loss, and she rubs at them, distracted.

"Going for a flight," Angel sings out, wings already unfurled as she leaps off the balcony. Angel loves the world travel, and though she doesn't love the killing, she shared her secret to combat early on: _I just pretend those assholes are all my old customers. You gotta fuck the world before it fucks you, mami._ She didn't have an answer when Mystique asks her how that worked out for Cuba, but then, none of them have any answers for what happened there.

Azazel and Riptide are asleep after a hard night's work, and Emma is off doing God knows what. That leaves Erik, but Mystique knows better than to disturb him when he's brooding over alcohol. There are certain things that always make her think of Charles, too, however different they are.

Mystique is on her third game of solitaire, grimacing at the irony, when Emma strolls into the hotel room like it's a palatial suite instead of the size of a closet. _I think you were the one with the palace,_ Emma says, mouth turning up in amusement.

 _Get out,_ Mystique thinks, rising to her feet. She builds a house of cards in her mind, a fragile structure that takes the best of balance to complete, and grins in savage satisfaction when she places the last card at the top. It holds. Emma is no longer a sugar-and-spice presence in her mind.

"I could tear you apart if I wanted," Emma says, lifting her chin, and Mystique thinks it's the first time she's ever seen Emma Frost admit to weakness.

"No one's stopping you except yourself," Mystique says. "Want to play cards?"

*

The nightmares are brutal. Mystique thinks she's holding up well until Emma taps her on the forehead and then she wakes up the next morning, more rested than she's been in months. Mystique can't even work up the energy to be angry with Emma, which is just as well. Mystique peels an orange for breakfast and eats it segment by segment, and hopes for rain.

The day is bright, of course, and they're no closer to finding the girl who can change the weather with a thought. Mystique exchanges a disappointed glance with Angel; they discovered they shared the same wish for a little sister when they first heard stories of the girl. Erik glares at Emma like he's going to murder her when she tells them that Ororo left three days ago with someone by the name of Xavier. "Don't shoot the messenger when you've already shot the man," Emma adds, unimpressed. Mystique spares a brief, wistful thought of what it must be like to be so fearless, and Emma turns her head in response, gaze sliding down Mystique like water.

That night, Mystique dreams of the third man she killed and wakes up sobbing at the sink, washing her hands like that character in a play she read years ago for school. Emma, regal in a little white nightgown, is the one who finds her, is the one who leads her back to bed, is the one who kisses her just on the corner of her mouth.

"Angel," Mystique says, instead of what she really wants to say, which is _What are you doing_ , and _Why me_ follows fast behind.

"Won't wake up unless I let her."

Which is how Mystique ends up flat on her back, fingers knotted in her bedsheets as Emma takes her apart piece by piece. Emma palms the underside of her breasts, and then her hands tighten and she rakes her fingernails down cruelly, perfectly. Mystique wants to protest that it's cheating, that she can feel Emma sifting through her mind, lighting up every nerve ending, but it gets lost in the choked moan that escapes her. She's embarrassingly wet for the little that's been done to her.

The bed creaks as Emma sits up, forcing Mystique's legs apart with a telepathic stroke. She kneels between them, and her face might as well be carved from diamond for all the expression in it. Mystique takes a deep breath during the reprieve, tries again to say something, anything, but Emma slides a cool hand between her thighs and she can't think anymore. Besides, Emma's glacial untouchability is all part of the appeal.

Then Emma's fingers harden, two sliding inside of her, and Mystique arches her back, fighting the urge to shift into a shape even more accommodating. It hurts, diamond fingers inside her, curling up and _stroking_ , but the pain only heightens the pleasure, rips her breath ragged. Emma bends down to kiss her, just once, a chaste brush of lips, and Mystique comes, shutting her eyes against the strange burst of tears on her cheeks.

Emma gets up to leave, making a minute adjustment to her nightgown, and Mystique finds her tongue at last. "You don't have to sleep with people to get them to do what you want."

The smile she gets in return is almost fragile, but it could be a trick of the half-light. "Honey, it's all I know how to do," Emma says, and then she's gone.

When Mystique dreams, it's just the color white, soft and endless and cold as snow.


End file.
